


Galena and the Northern Hunter

by ekwallace



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekwallace/pseuds/ekwallace
Summary: North's first adventure, before he's called North. Spoilers for Three Against.





	Galena and the Northern Hunter

He leaves as soon as he can walk more than five paces without gasping for breath. He cannot stay--every time he ventures from his house, the sight of the destruction and the carnage threatens to choke him until all he can do is scream, or weep--and he is weary of both. His physical wounds are healing. The others may never heal. Yet he must go on, even if he does not know how or why.

Those shadow creatures... they are still out there, and he does not know what they will, or can, do, but it cannot be good. He must find them--and find some way to destroy or contain them--but how? He can barely remember what he did before, and trying to push through the fog that surrounds the memory hurts almost as much as his wounds did when they were fresh. If only he knew what drew them in the first place.

He goes back to the house of healing for supplies, and notices the sunstones. They are a treasure he could not bear to leave forgotten and decaying, their little lights dimming until they die. But when he reaches to pluck one from the scatter on the ground, it is too hot to hold, like a coal from a stove. After a moment, he takes a spare shirt from his pack, that he might carry them without being burned. A problem far more easily solved than the mystery of why they should scorch him now, when they never did before.

As he crosses out of the borderlands, he cannot help but look to see if the destroyers lie in wait for him, after all this uncounted, uncountable time--absurd as it is, he cannot shake the thought.

But there is no one, and nothing to mark the passage out of his world and into theirs, save a faint feeling of difference in the air, some foreign scent or breeze.

He heads southeast for the simple reason that it is the easiest path down from the mountains at the top of the world, into the Jardisar Empire.

He soon grows grateful for the numbness that seems to hold him coldly apart from everything, even his own feelings, for the times when it shatters and leaves him flayed and open to every stray memory are much, much worse.

He does not even like plums, yet the scent of the fruit hanging heavy and ripe on a tree he passes, so like the tree by the fortune-teller’s house when he would pick one to bring in to her--she and that tree alike burnt and ash now--brings him to his knees in tears. 

So he learns to hold distance about him like armor, and hopes he can forget, someday, why he needs such a shield.

He finds the world that was made for humans not so different after all from his people’s. Many give him wary looks, as if not quite certain what he is. But perhaps that is only because he is a stranger everywhere he goes. If the destroyers still seek him, he either never sees them, or they are not certain enough of him to act.

Indeed, the open hostility he thought he would find is rare. More often, he meets with small kindnesses, an offered ride, a shared meal, a smile and few minutes’ talk that leave him feeling somehow lighter.

But still he feels _wrong_ , in a way separate and different from the wrongness he carries with him always. A way that grows as he travels father along his chance-chosen path.

He comes to a narrow mountain pass, and the feeling rises, a revulsion and pull together. _There is something here that is not right, yet it calls to me._ He touches the spot where the wrapped sunstones are tucked into his traveling pack, for courage or for luck, and the dagger in his belt for more solid reassurance, and goes on, alert for anything out of the ordinary.

A scream shatters the tense silence, and he is running toward the sound before he can think twice.

A young woman cowers against the rocky face of the steeply sided path, and standing before her, blocking her way and holding a mace poised ready to strike, is a creature out of nightmares.

Its skin is red as clay, and though its armor is finely detailed and moves as if it were chain and leather, it is of the same red and seems all of a piece with the creature’s body. Its eyes and lips are black with shadow, not like war-paint, but like oil oozing from what passes for its skin.

“Get behind me!”

The young woman scrambles to do so.

He is sure now that this demon is what he’s being called toward: the very air between it and him tugs heavy and painful at him, as if it strives to pull his heart from his body. But how is he to fight it, with nothing but the dagger and what nerve he can summon?

“Leave this place,” he calls to it.

It takes a step toward them, and the ground shakes with its tread. “No.” Its voice is deep and slow, like the patience of mountains. “You leave.” 

It swings the mace close enough that the breeze of its passing stirs his hair, and he tugs the young woman along with him in a hasty retreat to the mouth of the pass. The demon does not follow, but he hears--and feels--it pacing across the path, acting as sentry where they left it.

“Are you all right?” he says.

The young woman nods.

“What is your name?”

“Galena.” She gives him a shaky but bright smile. She has dark skin and eyes a light brown, nearly hazel or gold. He cannot tell, now that he has a moment to look at her, if she really is all that young, or if he just feels far older than he is. “What’s yours?”

The pull has receded for now into an ache, as if he strains against a weight, but with the promise of worse to come. “I must banish that demon.”

Her eyes widen. “The _neean_? It’s an old, old demon from deep in the mountains.”

“It is something else as well.” 

“What do you mean? What else is it?”

“It is touched by a shadow that I-- That I have seen before.”

She clearly catches his stumble, but does not press him for an explanation. “Is that why you came here?”

He nods. “To fight it.” _Even though the first and only time I tried to fight, I nearly died... might have_ actually _died, until..._

But he cannot think about that yet, though the memory is as viscerally sharp as all his others are distant and blurred--a flood into him, not filling but emptying, until his chest and throat felt hollow, and his vision sang with shadow.

“No one from my village has dared face it,” Galena says.

“Except you,” he points out. “What were you doing, taking a path guarded by a demon?”

She crosses her arms and looks away, but he waits, and after a moment, she turns back to face him. “My sister lives in the village down the mountain. She’s with child, and her time is soon. And...” More hesitant now, but there is definitely more annoyance than fear in her tone. “I didn’t really believe the stories. Why do you have to fight it?”

“I am called to.”

“Let me help you. I can fight, too.” As if to prove it, or show him her skills right this moment, she pulls a curved knife from a sheath at her calf.

“I am not sure blades will help us against it.”

“Then how are you going to kill it?”

_I do not know. I only know I must face it._

She gives him a narrow look as he lets the silence stretch without answering her. “You’re not a warrior.”

He gives a bitter laugh. “No. I’m a scholar. Or I was.”

“What--” She cuts herself off. “You won’t tell me what happened, will you?”

Whatever she sees when he meets her eyes makes her flush and look away again. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean--”

“You could not have known.”

He hisses in a breath as the pull grows sharper, and he fights to keep from stumbling back into the pass before he is ready.

He will never be any more ready than he is now. He grips the dagger more tightly. “Wait here.”

“I don’t think so, scholar.” Galena has her blade ready as well.

“You must.”

She shakes her head. “I know you do not fight for my sake--how could you? But it’s my safe passage you’ll win. I’m going to help you.”

“You are as fierce as the women of my people.” His approval is obvious in his voice. He does not mind.

Neither does she; she gives a grin that bares her teeth.

The shadow has taken over more of the demon, spreading like a gorget down over its neck and shoulders. Small rocks tumble from the cliff face as it plods heavily toward them.

He braces himself for the tearing pain of before, and reaches for the shadows with his mind.

They laugh.

 _That trick won’t work again, hunter._ The last word is a curse in their hissing mutter. _We can learn just as well as you._

The demon raises its mace and attacks.

He learned, as all his people do-- as all his people did... enough of combat to defend himself. This is nothing like that. 

_I shall have to let my hair grow... if I survive so long_ , he thinks, with grim humor, and then he has no thought to spare for anything but the fight.

He’s dimly aware of Galena beside him, swifter and more skilled, but without his reach, and he cannot forget that she is human. They are forced, slowly, fighting for every inch, but forced nonetheless back against the rock face.

Galena cries out as the demon narrowly misses her, and the hunter darts between her and it.

“What more do you know of it?” he cries. “Anything!”

“I don’t-- Wait! It hates people coming here enough to venture into the light. But it hates the light, too.”

That is the answer.

With no time to lose, he simply cuts through pack and enwrapping shirt alike, and the light of the sunstones pours out.

The demon staggers back, shielding its eyes. It teems with shadow now, its limbs coursing with it like ripples on a pond.

The hunter pulls the sunstones free of his pack, ignoring their burn, and thrusts them at the shadow.

Which _screams_ , furious and defeated. It shatters into pieces, like dust motes, and the hunter, his hand a blaze of pain and light, his grip failing, sweeps them away with a desperate swing of his arm.

The sunstones tumble to the ground, and he to his knees, landing hard.

“Hey! Come on, wake!”

Galena shakes him from his daze. How long he was insensible, he does not know, but it sounds like she has been calling him for some moments.

“Are you hurt?” He pushes himself to sit up with his good hand.

“No. It missed me.”

“The shadow creatures?”

“Gone. You saved me.” 

She does not let go of his shoulders, and for one weak, lovely moment, he lets himself sag against her and hold her as tightly. “No. _You_ saved both of us.”

He moves to stand, and she lets him go.

“You’re hurt. Let me help.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s the least I can do.” She is already taking bandages from her pack.

She’s gentle as she wraps his hand, but does not let her touch linger, though he thinks she would like to. In another life, he might like it as well. In this one, he has far too much to think about. The same pull he felt before has not yet returned in force, but he feels the first ache of it, distantly. _What have I become, that such monsters call to me?_

“What _were_ those things?”

“The motes of shadow... I don’t know, but I have fought them before. I think I am the only person still alive who has. They’re...” _Mine. And I am theirs._ He sighs. “It’s my battle to fight.”

“All alone?” Galena says.

She would come with him, if he asked, once she saw her sister safely brought to childbed. He sees it in her eyes, feels it in how she leans slightly closer to him.

He cannot ask.

“Yes. Alone. And I must go where they call me.”

“I wish--”

He closes his eyes, for if he looks at her, if he lets her finish, he _will_ ask. “I know.”

“At least tell me your name.”

 _Whatever I am now, however these creatures and I are bound together, I am not who, or what, I was. And I cannot carry all I was with me if I am to give myself to righting this wrong, as I must._ “I am a hunter from the north. No more.”

“Very well, then.” She smiles, though her eyes are sad. “Go with all my fondest wishes... northern hunter.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Neean" is a variation on "nyen," which is a Tibetan mountain demon, and "Galena" means "little clever one."


End file.
